


white lies and white lines

by olive_greets



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Celebrity, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bling Ring AU, Breaking and Entering, Glass Dildos, Los Angeles, M/M, Minor Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung/Nakamoto Yuta, Morally Ambiguous Character, Paryting, Road head (do not attempt), Sexting, Sexual Content, Sort Of, Theft, Underage Drinking, and morally questionable behavior, sharing clothes but make it unhealthy and illegal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:46:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29077323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olive_greets/pseuds/olive_greets
Summary: Breaking into celebrity's homes is easy. It is laughably easy, in fact. So easy, that the reasonsnot tobecome easier and easier to ignore.Breaking into Johnny Seo's house is easy.Running into Johnny Seo at a club while dressed in his shirt and wearing his perfume - not so easy.Everything is under control.
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 66
Kudos: 149





	white lies and white lines

**Author's Note:**

> Hi hi >:) Okay so this is way less wholesome than what I usually write (peep the tags), so consider yourself warned. This was really challenging but also really interesting to write, so I hope you’ll find it interesting to read! The idea for this au was somehow born in the comments of my last fic, in which the devil on my shoulder aka user birbiebi fanned the flames of this idea until I couldn’t NOT write it. So here it is, almost 20k words later. 
> 
> (Also, you definitely don’t need to have seen the movie - Sofia Coppola's flawed 2013 masterpiece "the Bling Ring" - to understand this fic, though a lot of plot points are inspired by the movie/real life events that inspired the movie)
> 
> Title is from Super Rich Kids by Frank Ocean ft. Earl Sweatshirt, from the bling ring soundtrack :)

Ten stretches out on the bed, yawning and sighing contentedly as the smooth sheets rub against his bare legs.

“You better not be tired, you lazy bitch.”

Ten scowls over at Yuta, who is seated in front of his vanity, reapplying his lip balm. Yuta meets his gaze in the mirror and rolls his eyes, the tube of lip balm hovering just above his lips. “Doyoung will literally kill me if we’re late again. Get your skinny ass up and get dressed.”

Ten tuts, annoyed, but rolls of the bed anyway. “My ass is not skinny,” he retorts, walking over to stand next to Yuta and cupping his ass cheeks in the mirror. “You call this – ” he gives them a squeeze over his shorts for emphasis – “skinny?”

Yuta ignores him in favor of leaning close to the mirror and dabbing delicately at the corners of his lips. 

Ten sighs dramatically and makes his way to the closet. He rummages around, tossing random garments onto the floor, before settling on a pair of sinfully tight ripped jeans and a low-cut black tee. A bit basic, but it has the desired effect. He dresses quickly, smudges on some eyeliner, then walks to stand behind Yuta to admire himself in the mirror.

“What do you think, Yuta?” He purrs, leaning down to run his hands over Yuta’s chest. “If you saw me at the club and you didn’t know me, what would you think of me?”

“You really want to know?” Yuta says, raising his eyebrows at Ten’s exaggerated pout. “Okay, I’d think you’d be willing to suck my dick in the bathroom for a round of champagne.”

Ten’s smile grows, and he leans down to ghost his mouth over Yuta’s studded ear. “Perfect,” he breathes.

“Freak,” Yuta says, though his voice is tinged with a hint of pride. He shrugs Ten away, but Ten just cackles and skips to the door, pulling on his shoes as he goes.

Yuta stands and follow him, his faux-snakeskin boots clacking on the floor.

///

Ten, Yuta, and their other roommate Yangyang share a Lyft to Hollywood Boulevard and walk the remaining block to the Playhouse – the bouncers block off traffic outside the club for the VIP valet, so they don’t even bother trying to get any closer – where Jungwoo, Yukhei, and three other people Ten has never seen before are waiting outside. The street out front is pulsing with the music coming from inside the club, with a raucous line stretching nearly around the block. Jungwoo immediately latches onto Yangyang and the two of them start posing with their tongues out and snapping selfies, angling their phones to make sure the brightly lit Playhouse marquis is in the shot.

Ten slings his arm through Yuta’s and follows him up to the bouncer. The bouncer turns and starts to frown down at them, but his face breaks into a grin when he recognizes Yuta.

“Doyoung’s got a couch for you in the back,” the bouncer says, and Yuta winks at him as they saunter through the front door, pointedly ignoring the dirty looks from the finance bros at the front of the line. The rest of their friends follow close behind.

The club is packed. Ten clings tightly onto Yuta’s arm as they weave between the well-heeled patrons to the back of the club. (As always, he keeps his eyes peeled for the one face he always hopes to see. His eyes linger on every tall man that passes by; hoping, hoping to see him – but he is inevitably disappointed when they turn his way, revealing their thin lips or weak chin or whatever feature that falls short of those of the face in his mind). They make their way to an empty leather couch wedged into a back corner, where Doyoung stands, dressed in his typical all-black turtleneck and slacks ensemble. The look is unusually modest for a promoter, but Doyoung brings in so much business for the club that no one seems to mind.

“You actually made it on time, I never thought I’d see the day,” Doyoung says when they approach. Yuta rolls his eyes and lets Doyoung plant a kiss on his cheek, then flops down onto the couch. Ten scoots in after him, and the rest of the group shuffles in.

“Babe, can you get us some drinks? I’m thirsty,” Yuta says to Doyoung as he scrolls through Instagram.

“Sure thing, babe,” Doyoung says, smiling down at Yuta (whose eyes are still glued to his phone). “What are you in the mood for?”

“I don’t know, _babe_ , surprise me,” Yuta huffs, finally looking up at Doyoung in annoyance. He raises his eyebrows, and Doyoung stares back at him. After a moment, Doyoung shakes his head and sets off into the crowd in the direction of the bar, giving the rest of them a pointed look before he goes.

The live band finally comes on stage, and the music swells around them. The lights dim and the strobe lights flash, and Ten gets progressively more drunk and (only a little) stoned. Somehow, he finds himself on the dancefloor, sandwiched between Yuta and Yukhei. His body is loose and he dances carelessly, winding his arms around Yukhei’s broad shoulders as Yuta giggles into the back of his neck. To their right, Jungwoo and Yangyang are hanging off the arms of two men Ten has never seen before, shout-whispering to one another and swaying on their feet. Yukhei’s breath smells like mango vape juice, and somehow that is the funniest thing in the world. Ten laughs until the floor starts shifting under his feet.

When they end up back by their couch to catch their breaths, Jungwoo leans close to Ten’s ear. “Oh my god, is that Taemin Lee?” he shouts over the pounding bass, pointing in the direction of the raised VIP section at the back of the club. Ten follows Jungwoo’s finger. Through the dizzying haze of his crossfade Ten can’t focus his eyes well enough to see through the crowd, but he thinks he remembers Yuta telling him that this was one of the singer’s favorite spots.

“Yeah, he comes here a lot,” Ten shouts back, preening when Jungwoo looks back at him, impressed.

“Only when he’s not in Korea,” Yuta says loudly, having materialized behind them with a shot glass in each hand. He pushes one into Ten’s palm and tips it up towards his mouth. Giggling, Ten tilts his head back and pours the drink down his throat, hardly feeling the burn. He stumbles, and Yuta grabs his arm to keep him upright, and somehow, they are both laughing again. “Your makeup is all fucked up,” Yuta slurs, wiping sadly at Ten’s cheek. Ten pouts, then poses when Yuta holds up his phone for a picture.

A feeling close to bliss swells in Ten’s chest. As he looks around the spinning room of the club, at his friends and their private couch and the celebrities and pseudo-celebrities littered throughout the crowd – it feels like something in his life has finally fallen into place. Like he was meant to be nowhere else but the Playhouse on a Friday night, partying in the same air as Taemin Lee and probably dozens of other A-listers.

He had always felt – no, he always knew – that there was more to him than just being the son of a washed-up daytime TV actress, barely having managed to graduate high school six months prior, paying his own rent with odd jobs and side hustles. For once in his life, he feels like _somebody_.

And, looking at Yuta and Jungwoo’s pictures from the club the next morning, he can almost trick himself into truly believing it.

///

Ten lays on Yuta’s bed with a pillow over his face in a pointless attempt to try to smother his hangover into nonexistence. He groans and flips onto his stomach as a wave of nausea overtakes him, but he manages to ride it out. After a few deep breaths into the blanket, Ten sits up and blearily looks around. Yuta sits next to him, bare from the waist down but still in his shirt from the previous night out, scrolling through his laptop. Ten scoots up towards him and leans his chin on Yuta’s shoulder. “Remind me never to go to one of Yukhei’s parties again,” he mumbles, trying (and failing) to get his eyes to focus on the screen in front of him. “What are you looking at?”

“Just some gossip blog. Apparently Taemin Lee is flying to Korea tonight to shoot a reality show, and he won’t be back in LA for three months.”

Ten hums and watches lazily as Yuta skims through the rest of the article. At the bottom of the page is a slideshow of pictures showcasing a massive, gated mansion. “Is that his house?” Ten asks, leaning closer to the screen. “Ew, it’s so ugly. Who actually has columns like that anymore?”

“I know, right?” Yuta says, clicking through the photos. “He’s probably glad to be leaving for three months. I know I would be, if I lived in that house.”

“Where does he live? The Valley?”

Yuta squints closer to the screen. “It doesn’t say, but yeah, probably somewhere in Calabasas.” He pulls up a new tab and starts typing. “It shouldn’t be too hard to find where he lives, let’s see …” He clicks on the fourth result and opens onto a page showing a full address and phone number.

“Whoa,” Ten says, looking at Yuta in disbelief. “Is that real?”

“Probably, yeah,” Yuta says with a shrug. “Celebrities are way more careless than people think.” As he switches back to the article and clicks back through the photos, a smile starts growing across his face. He looks up at Ten, a glint of something dangerous in his eyes. “Let’s go.”

Ten blinks back at him. “Go? Go where?”

Yuta rolls his eyes and jerks his head towards the computer. “Taemin Lee’s house. He’s out of the country for three whole months. We could probably waltz in through the front door and no one would notice.”

Ten is about to laugh, but he stops himself at the look on Yuta’s face. “You’re serious.” Yuta shrugs. “Yuta, we can’t just go to his house, that’s … I don’t know, we just can't. Right?"

“Why not? Let’s go, take a few pictures, then leave. No harm done.” He raises his eyebrows at Ten’s dubious look. “People like this think they’re untouchable. He probably doesn’t even have a security system. And, besides, what do we have to lose?”

_Nothing. Absolutely nothing._

Something in Yuta’s eyes seems to say, _live a little._ And, suddenly, it seems like the best idea in the world. The words slip out of Ten’s mouth before he even realizes he is saying them. “Yeah. Yeah, alright. I’m in.”

///

“Ow!”

“What?”

“Your heel just cut my neck! Your boots are so sharp, what the hell?”

“Oh, stop being so dramatic,” Yuta hisses down at him from where he stands on Ten’s shoulders. “Now, finish boosting me over.”

Ten grumbles to himself, even as he raises himself on shaking knees to hoist Yuta the rest of the way over the fence. Yuta lands on the other side with a soft thud, then dashes to the gate and unlocks the latch. Ten secures his scarf around his face and slips inside, casting a final glance over his shoulder as he goes. The residential street behind them is dark and silent, with the only sound coming from the freeway in the valley far below.

Ten follows Yuta through the yard. They hug the edge as they go, trying to stay in the shadows of the hedges and orange trees. “There!” Yuta whispers, and they scurry across the yard towards the front door. “Help me look for the key. Check the planters.” Ten nods and quickly searches through the large urn by the front door as Yuta lifts the mat. “Here!” Yuta whispers triumphantly, holding up the small silver key. Ten laughs silently in disbelief as Yuta slides the key into the lock. He pauses, turns the doorknob, then his eyes go wide as the door creaks open.

Ten slips inside after Yuta, his heart pounding in his ears and his body buzzing with adrenaline.

The front door opens immediately onto a large, sparsely decorated atrium, with two staircases on either side leading up to the gilded balcony above. The floors are made of black and white marble, and abstract sculptures made of twisted metal reflect the starlight that comes in through the skylight overhead. The house is dark and empty.

Yuta grabs his hand, and Ten turns around to look at him. Yuta’s eyes are shining, his face aglow. Then, Yuta’s eyes slide past him to the spiral staircase at the far end of the room, and he drops Ten’s hand. “Let’s go,” he whispers, striding across the atrium to the stairs. His snakeskin boots ring loud and sharp on the marble floor, the sound echoing off the cold walls of the house. Ten looks around nervously, but there is only him to hear it.

The second level of the house is filled with branching hallways and massive rooms. The walls are all lined with paintings and photographs of Taemin, and the singer’s eyes seem to follow them as they stalk through the halls, peering into every closet and room. Other than the portraits, there seem to be almost no personal belongings – no magazines, no house slippers, no evidence that an actual human being lives here, other than the presence of toilet paper in the bathrooms.

“Where’s all his stuff?” Ten wonders aloud, as they walk through what feels like the hundredth sparsely decorated sitting room.

Yuta shrugs. “I don’t know. He probably has secret panels under the floor or something. I bet all his good shit’s in his bedroom, anyway.” Ten nods, jogging a little to catch up with his friend. Then, he slows as they pass by a large set of double doors.

“Yuta,” Ten calls, stopping in front of the doors. “You think this could be it?”

Yuta walks over to him. “Could be. Let’s see.”

Ten turns the handle carefully, then pushes the door open with his shoulder. Yuta peers around him as the door opens, and gasps. He smiles down at Ten as they walk into the room. “Told you all the good stuff would be in here.”

The bedroom they find themselves in is easily the size of their entire apartment, if not bigger. A bed the size of an SUV sits on a raised platform in the middle of the room, surrounded on either side by majesty palms embedded into the tiled floor. Two enormous flat-screen TVs flank the walls, which are lined with even more portraits – Ten does a double-take and realizes they are all nudes of Taemin, lounging on couches or posing with a muscular man Ten doesn’t recognize.

Ten’s eyes are drawn to the wall on the opposite side of the room, and his mouth hangs open as he approaches it. A picture window spanning the back wall reveals a view of the entire Valley below, the lights of the cars and houses spread out in a glittering tapestry. On the horizon in the distance, the night sky seems to be perpetually illuminated, glowing with the lights of the expansive city that stretches on until infinity.

Ten leans forward until his nose presses against the glass. From this angle, he feels like he is floating above the world, levitating by some invisible force that buoys him up above the tiny houses and cars below. He almost forgets where they are, until Yuta calls over to him and snaps him out of his trance.

Ten turns around, feeling somewhat dazed and disoriented, to the sight of Yuta standing in the middle of the room, wearing a black-and-gold Versace bathrobe and enormous tortoiseshell sunglasses. “What do you think?” he says, spinning around with his arms raised. 

“Classy,” Ten says, laughing despite himself as Yuta whips off the glasses and strikes a dramatic pose. “Where’d you get that stuff?”

“Closet,” Yuta says with a self-satisfied smirk, indicating with his thumb to the door behind him. “One of three.”

“He has _three_ closets?” Ten gasps, walking rapturously over to the open door.

“That I found so far,” Yuta says, following Ten into the closet. “He could open up a whole luxury mall in his house, I’ve never seen more designer shit in my entire life.” He pulls a face. “And I’ve seen a _lot_.”

“Do you think he has any Prada?” Ten muses, as his minds spins to process the sight in front of him. Unlike the sparse, modernist decoration of the rest of the house, every nook and crevice of the huge walk-in closet is filled with clothes and accessories, from the mirrored wall of designer coats and shoes to the glass display shelves filled with hats and jewelry.

Yuta snorts as he pulls a purple leather jacket off a hanger and slings a Birkin bag over his elbow. “I bet he has so much Prada that he probably wouldn’t even notice if someone stole half of it. Come to think of it,” Yuta continues, spinning around to level him with an expression Ten can’t immediately read. “He probably wouldn’t notice if someone stole any of it.”

“Yeah, right,” Ten scoffs, running his fingers over a rack of chiffon shirts. “He probably keeps a detailed inventory of everything.”

Yuta shakes his head firmly. “No way. Celebrities get so much free shit, there’s no _way_ he keeps track of all of it. He probably has his assistant deal with all his clothes, or even organize his closet for him. I’m sure of it.”

“How can you be sure?” Ten asks, feeling slightly sick from the hope that creeps into his voice.

“I’m sure,” Yuta says, his smile growing. “If a pair of your socks go missing, do you immediately go into panic mode? No. You just assume it got lost somehow, and never think about it again. And you’re broke. Imagine what it’s like for someone who has everything and more? Hell, he’d probably be grateful for someone to help him offload all this stuff to someone who would actually appreciate it.”

Ten is barely listening, though, having dropped to his knees in front of a pair of chunky black leather combat boots. “Prada,” he breathes, tracing the silver logo with his finger. He looks up at Yuta, to find his friend smirking down at him. “What?”

“Try them on.”

Ten doesn’t need to be told twice. He kicks off his own shoes (a pair of knock-off Dr. Marten’s from a storefront on Hollywood Boulevard) and pulls on the boots. They fit like a glove, the smooth leather hugging the curves of his feet like they were made for him. He stands and examines his reflection in the mirrored wall. Yuta comes up behind him and drapes the purple leather jacket over his shoulders.

“Nice, right?” Yuta says into his ear, and Ten shrugs him away.

“Who are you, the literal devil on my shoulder? They’re nice, obviously,” Ten says, frowning at Yuta’s reflection. He wiggles his toes and bounces on his heels. The soles of the shoes cushion his feet, and they are easily the most comfortable shoes he’s even worn in his life. “He probably doesn’t even wear them … do you really think he wouldn’t notice?”

Yuta’s smile grows, and he links his arm around Ten’s elbow.

“Let’s go shopping.”

///

Ten’s breath is hot in his throat as they dash back through the front yard and out of the gate, a handbag on each arm stuffed to the brim with clothes and accessories. Yuta’s haul is nearly identical, save for the two wads of cash stuffed in his coat pocket. They keep in the shadows as they speed-walk down the street and around the corner to Yuta’s car, and Ten is almost delirious with adrenaline when they throw the bags into the backseat and jump into the front seat, slamming the doors behind them. They sit for a minute, just catching their breaths, then Yuta looks over at him. His face is pink, his eyes wild behind his new designer glasses. Ten meets his eyes, a dazed smile growing across his face. “Those look good on you,” he says, and suddenly they are laughing until tears stream down their faces.

“I can’t believe we just did that,” Ten says, still giggling as Yuta finally turns on the car and starts driving them down the hill.

“Believe it, honey,” Yuta says. He rolls down the window and turns up the radio as soon as they are around the corner. “You are now the certified owner of not just one, but two, pairs of Prada shoes. I think that’s cause for celebration.”

Ten’s head feels light, as though it has become detached from the rest of his body. He looks down at his feet, a swell of joy growing in him as the silver buckles of the boots glint in the low light of the car. “That’s not a bad idea.”

“Of course not, it’s a great idea.” Yuta reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a rose-gold vape pen, and takes a deep drag. The clouds that billow around him are illuminated by the red lights of the dashboard. The air coming through the open window blows the vapor into Ten’s face, but it quickly dissipates. “Apparently Yukhei’s got his dad’s place to himself again.”

Ten leans back in his seat and kicks his feet onto the dash, admiring the boots and ignoring Yuta’s annoyed look. “If there’s nowhere better to go, I guess.” He pretends to flip his bangs out of his face.

Yuta snorts. “There isn’t. Doyoung’s working freelance at another club this weekend, so the Playhouse is off the table. Unfortunately, until I start dating someone better connected, we’re stuck with Yukhei and his gross college friends.”

“Alright,” Ten sighs, grabbing the vape from Yuta’s hand. He grips the door handle as Yuta speeds up to blow through a yellow light. “Let’s go. I need to show off my new wardrobe to someone other than you, anyway.”

As they drive the rest of the way to Yukhei’s dad’s house, Ten digs through one of the handbags and pulls out some choice accessories for the party, including a set of dangly Cartier earrings and studded choker. As Yuta loudly raps along to the song on the radio, Ten admires his reflection in the mirror, angling his face back and forth. He smiles to himself as he delicately fingers the choker, tracing over the smooth leather and glittery silver studs. The fact that it belongs to – or used to belong to – Taemin Lee soon fades into the background of his mind. After all, the singer probably wore it once and forgot about it. He probably has dozens like it.

Yuta was right; Ten actually _appreciates_ the piece. He feels expensive, elegant; and, as they walk into the party, his chest swells as people look at them as they pass.

They find the usual suspects (Yukhei, Jungwoo and Yangyang) lounging out back by the pool, sharing a bottle of cinnamon whiskey.

“Where have you two been?” Yangyang asks as they approach, moving aside to let them sit. Ten and Yuta exchange a look. “Oh, just Taemin’s.” Yuta says, pulling out his phone and scrolling lazily through it.

Yangyang just looks confused. “Who’s Taemin? Isn’t that your brother’s ex?”

Yuta rolls his eyes. “No, that’s _Jaemin_. Taemin. You know, Taemin Lee?”

Jungwoo’s eyes widen in realization. “The singer? The one we saw at the club?”

“Yeah,” Ten jumps in. “It was really easy to get in, he leaves his key under the mat, believe it or not. It’s like he wants people to go into his house when he’s not home. I got these, look.” He holds his finger up to his ear to show off the earring, angling his face so they reflect the light. Jungwoo _oohs_ and leans in, looking jealously at the jewelry.

“Yeah, right,” Yukhei says, in between sips of whiskey from the bottle. “I don’t trust either of you two, you’re both hella shifty. Prove it.” Without missing a beat, Yuta scoots forward on his chair and holds out his phone.

“See,” he says, nonchalantly. “There’s Ten in his bedroom. Look, he has all these nude portraits of himself. And this is his MTV video award in the background,” he adds, pinching his fingers to zoom into the background. Yukhei leans forward and pushes the bottle into Jungwoo’s hand as he grabs the phone. He holds it up to his face, squints, then hands it back. “Alright, seems legit,” Yukhei says, looking back and forth between them. “So, what else did you get? Anything valuable?”

“Clothes, jewelry, makeup, perfume, cash,” Ten says, listing them off on his fingers. “And I got these shoes.”

When he realizes that Yukhei, Jungwoo, and Yangyang are all hanging off his every word, enraptured, he continues. “He has so much stuff he probably would never even notice if half of it went missing. It’s basically charity. He’s gone for three months so we could probably go again, no problem.”

“Really?” Jungwoo says, a look of pure amazement on his angelic face. “I want to go.”

Ten looks back at Yuta, who is back to scrolling through his phone. “Yeah, maybe, but you have to be cool about it. The more people we take, the riskier it is.”

“I can be cool,” Jungwoo says, throwing back a shot of whiskey for emphasis. Yangyang slaps him on the back when he starts choking. Jungwoo wipes the tears from his eyes. “Yeah, we can be cool,” Yangyang says, rubbing Jungwoo reassuringly on the back as he recovers.

“Fine,” Ten says. “We can go tomorrow night. We’ll pick you up in Yuta’s car, right Yuta? And make sure you wear black.”

///

The five of them sneak into Taemin’s house the next night.

Then, a few of them go the following week, and then the weekend after that.

Sometimes, they “shop” (as Yuta continues to call it); sometimes they just lounge around on his bed, smoking or taking pictures in his clothes or in his massive indoor hot tub.

Once they start getting bored with Taemin’s house, Ten begins to look up other addresses – celebrities out of town for the weekend, or even for the night.

After Taemin’s, him and Yuta first go to Sooyoung Park’s house – a modernist glass monstrosity, where the side-doors slide open with no resistance. They visit Jongin Kim’s beachfront Malibu mansion, where the reality star’s collection of Versace pendants makes Yuta’s eyes pop out of his head. They find Joohyun Bae’s Calabasas residence, with a miraculously unlocked backdoor and a surprising big collection of titanium handguns under the bed.

Getting inside the houses is never an issue. It is laughably easy, in fact. So easy, that the reasons _not to_ become easier and easier to ignore. Their biggest scare comes in the form of Sehun Oh’s yapping dog, who frightens them off before they can get past the foyer of the singer’s Beverly Hills mansion.

Everything is under control.

Soon, the space below Ten’s bed is no longer big enough to store everything. It spills out into the hallway, filling up cardboard boxes in the living room and kitchen. Word of their exploits gets around (Yuta’s Instagram pictures of him in his newest designer outfits don’t hurt, either) and soon, eager-eyed teens or college kids approach them at parties with wads of cash in hand, looking for brands or celebrity’s names. As much as they sell, however, new goods somehow continue to pile up in their apartment.

It is Ten’s idea to set up the private Instagram. His old high school boyfriend had used one such account to sell pills to private school kids, and when Ten suggests the idea to Yuta, Yuta just shakes his head in disbelief that he hadn’t thought of it himself. Ten takes the pictures of the items himself, styling Yuta or himself and posing against the one plain wall in their apartment. He posts them with a starting price, then takes requests by DM. The customers – usually high school students, though some are their age or older – come to their house and pay via app, or Yangyang bikes to their old high school with the goods in his basket for drop-offs after school.

Ten has no reason to stop. He has never seen so much money in his life. On top of that, he finds that he enjoys managing the account, negotiating prices, building a customer base – and he is good at it. He has stopped questioning the process; when they enter a new house, it is routine. No second-guessing, no metaphorical looking over his shoulder.

No more secretly hoping, in some dark recess of his heart, that they would get caught before things got really out of hand. 

Everything is under control.

///

“If you could go to anyone’s house, anywhere in the world, whose would it be?”

He and Yuta are laying on Yuta’s bed, half-watching reality TV reruns while Ten responds to DM requests. Ten looks up in surprise at the question.

“Anyone?”

Yuta nods. “Hold on,” Ten mutters, pulling up his personal Instagram and scrolling through his followed accounts. “I’ve actually thought about this before, a few times. You can probably guess who it is. Here.” He holds out his phone, which Yuta grabs from his hand, then looks up at him with a knowing smirk.

“Oh, of _course_.” Yuta holds the phone close to his face. “Johnny Seo. You’re still obsessed with him?”

Ten rips his phone out of Yuta’s hand before Yuta can do anything devious. “I’m not _obsessed_ with him. I just have a healthy, perfectly normal fascination with his abs.”

“Yeah, since you were what, thirteen? That sounds like an obsession to me.”

“Oh, please,” Ten retorts, scrolling through his bookmarked pictures of Johnny Seo in his home gym, selfies of him flexing in front of a mirror and candid shots of him pumping iron with headphones in. “As though you don’t have an actor you’re obsessed with. What about you, whose house would you go to?”

“So, you admit it – you are obsessed!” Yuta says triumphantly, flipping onto his stomach and looking up at Ten through his lashes. “And don’t change the subject. If you’re so in love with him, why haven’t we paid him a visit yet?”

Ten’s thumb hovers over a picture of Johnny Seo standing in his kitchen, leaning shirtless against a granite countertop with a mug of coffee raised halfway to his mouth. He looks away from the camera, the morning light hitting the angles of his face. Yuta’s question is completely valid, yet Ten doesn’t have an answer that he can comfortably articulate.

“I don’t know. I guess we could, right?” Ten muses, still looking at the picture. “He just always seemed so … untouchable.”

Yuta smiles up at him. “No one’s untouchable.” He pulls out his phone and starts typing. “Let’s see … he works part-time as a DJ, right? Maybe he’s playing a set somewhere.” Ten nods, but the thought of actually stepping inside _Johnny Seo’s_ house makes his stomach bunch into knots.

Yuta sits up. “I knew it! Apparently, he’s playing at some big nightclub in Singapore this weekend. That should give us at least a few days. He lives alone, right?”

Ten thinks back through every post of Johnny Seo he can recall, every article he’s read speculating about the actor’s personal life. “I think so, I don’t remember ever seeing him in pictures with anyone. I think he likes to keep his private life pretty private, though.”

“Perfect.” Yuta flashes him a cat-like grin. “We have to go.”

Ten closes his eyes and imagines walking through the halls of Johnny Seo’s house, breathing in the air of his home gym, running his fingers along the granite countertops in his kitchen. He can’t deny the thrill that courses through him at the thought, or the way his heart kicks against his ribcage.

Yuta had been right; his particular interest (no, not obsession) with the actor Johnny Seo had spanned back years, back to his middle school days, back when he used to stare at the posters above his bed, staring so hard that his eyes began to blur and he could almost imagine the people stepping out of the frames and into his bedroom. Johnny Seo’s was not the only poster, though his face could be found in nearly every corner of Ten’s small room, from the walls to the covers of the magazines stacked in a corner to the wallpaper on his desktop.

He could never explain it, but there was always something about Johnny Seo that was different from any other actor Ten had a schoolboy crush on. It was his eyes … or maybe his lips, or maybe that particular way he carried himself on screen. Whatever it was, Ten had always felt that, were he to ever meet Johnny Seo – at a red carpet event, perhaps, or on line at a coffee shop, or in the cookbook section of a bookstore – Johnny Seo would feel it too. Ten would never say it out loud. He knew, rationally, that it was delusional. But that thought, that feeling – silly as it may be – clung to the back of his subconscious like a thistle every time they stepped through the doors of the Playhouse or any other club, his eyes darting around desperately for a hint of Johnny Seo’s beautiful face.

Not obsession. Not even a little. 

Everything is under control.

///

Johnny Seo’s house is perched at the top of a quiet, residential street in the Valley. The house is dark, surrounded by conifer trees and illuminated by only one light above the door. Compared to the rest of the houses on the block, this one is relatively small, so much so that one might walk past it twice without noticing it – which is what happens to them as they scurry from Yuta’s car, following the directions on Yangyang’s phone.

The front door is locked, as is the backdoor, with no spare keys to be found under any mats or in any planters. Yuta finds an unlocked window around the side of the house, which Yangyang volunteers to squeeze through. After a minute of cursing and shoving, Yuta and Ten manage to hoist him onto their shoulders and through the window, his narrow hips barely fitting through the opening. They run around to the back door and wait breathlessly for Yangyang to unlock it from the inside, and then suddenly Ten is inside of Johnny Seo’s house.

He feels like he is walking through a dream as he lowers his hood and steps through the vestibule and into the kitchen. It looks exactly as it does in Johnny Seo’s photographs, from the tasteful granite countertops and warm wood of the cabinets, to the gleaming steel refrigerator decorated with novelty magnets from national parks. Yuta and Yangyang immediately set off down the hallway in search of the bedroom, but Ten lingers in the kitchen, running his fingers over the cool metal of the café-quality espresso machine, complete with knobs and levers and topped with a collection of tiny porcelain mugs.

A strange instinct compels Ten to look in the trash on his way out of the kitchen. It is mostly empty, save for the wrapper of a protein bar and an old take-out container. On his way down the hallway, he pauses every few steps to admire the vintage movie posters and records on the walls, many of which are lovingly framed and signed.

He peers into each room as he passes. Most of the furniture is either made of dark wood or upholstered with leather, and nearly every surface is covered with objects – art books, small bronze animal sculptures, framed pictures and postcards. Unlike most of the other homes they have visited, which felt gaudy and cold, Johnny Seo’s house has a warmth to it. It is tasteful, lived-in. Ten could easily imagine curling up in any room with a good book, a glass of wine, and a nice lap to sit in.

As tempted as he is to stop and admire every object, to hold its weight in his hands, Ten continues up the stairs and follows the sound of voices to a room at the end of the second-floor hallway. 

He finds Yuta and Yangyang digging through the shelves of a large walk-in closet, tossing items onto the floor and holding up others for closer inspection. Over the course of their various outings, they had become adept at identifying which items would sell. They had their selection process down to a cold science, almost to the point where Ten could trick his brain into forgetting what they were really doing. The items of clothing became just that: items, with no legal owner, no sentimental value, no worth beyond the name on the label.

Yet when he steps through the doors of Johnny Seo’s closet, that cold detachment thaws away in an instant, leaving a warm, sickly-sweet feeling that grows in his gut and claws its way up his throat, threatening to choke him from the inside out.

Like the rest of the house, the shelves and drawers in the closet are made of a warm wood, the floor decorated with a plush, patterned rug that muffles the sound of his footsteps as he walks slowly around the closet, brushing his fingers over everything within arm’s reach. He forgets the other two are there; who are Yuta and Yangyang, anyway? It is just him and Johnny Seo. Though Johnny Seo isn’t there in person, he might as well be – in the worn sleeves of a black leather jacket, in the laces of the boots and loafers lined up by the back wall, in the collar of a forest green turtleneck lovingly folded on a shelf beside many others of similar color. He is there, in the rich scent of pine that seems to seep out of every surface, in the musky aroma that is sewn into the smooth fabric of his ties.

Ten stops, as though in a trance, in front of a rack of shirts and sweatshirts. They aren’t loud or bright in color; rather, they are just simple shirts. Mostly black, some white. Some are plain, some are decorated with logos or motifs. He removes the first clothing hanger on the rack, revealing a heavy, black sweatshirt with a small white Vetements logo in the corner. There are at least ten others just like it, with logos of various sizes. Surely, he would never notice if it went missing. Ten slips it over his head and shivers as the soft fabric kisses the skin on his arms and neck. It falls around mid-thigh, the sleeves baggy and long enough to bunch up in his hands. He pulls up the hood and hugs himself, breathing in deeply. He pulls another few t-shirts off the rack and stuffs them in the large front-pocket of the hoodie.

“Damn, look at these.”

Ten forces himself back to the present. He looks around at Yuta and Yangyang, who are bent over a jewelry box. “Gotta be real diamonds, right?” Yuta muses, holding a pair of earrings up to the light. “Wonder how much these would go for. They’re a little small, though; people might think they’re fake.”

Yangyang just shrugs and stuffs a pair of belts into his backpack. “You know better than I do. What do you think, Ten?” he asks, craning his neck around to level Ten with his wide-eyed gaze. Ten looks back at Yangyang, at his baby fat and his small frame that looks even smaller when hunched over the backpack on the floor. 

Ten glances at the earrings. “Uh, I don’t know. Yuta’s probably right,” he says distractedly, his eyes suddenly drawn to the door at the other end of the closet. He steps around Yangyang and the pile of clothes on the floor, walking through the doorway and flicking on the lightswitch on the wall.

A warm, yellow light fills the space, revealing a bedroom of relatively average size, compared with many of the other houses they’ve seen. It is stylishly furnished with a king-sized bed in the center, dark wood furniture, a flatscreen TV mounted to the wall, and a pile of weights in the corner. The far wall is set with a bookshelf that reaches nearly up to the ceiling.

He ignores the bed (even looking at it makes him feel dizzy) and walks over to the desk. He lowers himself into the leather chair and sinks his full weight down, picking up various objects and holding them in his hands – a glass paperweight, an autographed baseball, a framed picture of two dogs.

Yuta enters the room, hums, and walks over to him. Ten looks up at him. Yuta eyes his sweatshirt knowingly. “What do you think?” Yuta asks, gesturing around grandly. “Think you can picture sleeping with your future husband in this room?”

Ten rolls his eyes and stands from the chair, hoping Yuta doesn’t see the blush slowly creeping us his neck. “Shut up, it’s not like that.” He walks over to the bureau and starts opening each drawer one by one, starting from the top. “He just has really nice stuff. I mean, he has taste. Like, he actually cares about his space and how it feels, not just how it looks.”

“Mhmm,” Yuta says. Ten feels his eyes on the back of his neck. Ten ignores him and walks over the vanity. “Let’s just get what we need and go. I feel like we’ve been pushing our luck lately, anyway.”

“Whatever you say,” Yuta says, then, after a long pause, makes his way to the other side of the room.

“Look under the bed, there’s usually some good shit under there,” Ten calls over his shoulder to Yuta. In the mirror of the vanity, Ten sees Yuta nod and drop to his knees, reaching his arm under the bed as far as it can go.

“Found something,” he says triumphantly, pulling out a flat silver box.

Ten turns back to Johnny’s vanity, delicately running his fingers over the bottles of cologne that are neatly arranged by size. He picks up a bottle of Dior Homme and uncaps the top, spritzing some onto his wrist.

He raises his wrist to his nose and breathes in deep, closing his eyes as he imagines what it would be like to bury his face in Johnny Seo’s neck, rubbing his nose against his skin, getting Johnny Seo’s scent all over his face and onto his clothes. The thought alone sends a thrill down his spine.

“Ten.” Yuta’s voice cuts through his daydream.

“Hm?” Ten says absently, setting the bottle down and picking up another – this time, a cylindrical bottle of Dior Ambre Nuit, which is nearly empty.

“Ten,” Yuta says again. With a sigh, Ten turns around to find Yuta kneeling on the floor with the silver case opened in front of him.

“What is it? Another gun?” Ten asks, pocketing the perfume.

“Guess again,” Yuta says mischievously.

“What - cash? Coke?”

Yuta grins and spins the box to face Ten. Ten covers his mouth and gasps in disbelief.

“Oh. My. God.”

He crosses the room and sinks down in front of Yuta. Inside the box, nestled in a bed of black velvet, are six glass dildos. The pieces range from smooth and long to curved and flared, covered in colorful glass bumps and spiraled ridges like a candy cane. One is covered in rounded knobs at the end, like a rattlesnake’s tail; one has a translucent pink glass heart at the tip; one is even double-sided, with realistic-looking veins running along the glassy surface.

“Oh my god,” Ten says again, looking up to meet Yuta’s eyes. “I’m going to literally scream.” He looks back down at the box and runs his fingers over the dildos. They are smooth and cool to the touch. He carefully picks one up – a delicately curved cylinder that tapers to a point on one end, with an abstract blue and green pattern suspended in the glass – and holds it up to admire the way the light refracts through it.

“Do you think he’d notice if one went missing?” Ten muses, holding it up to his cheek to feel the smooth surface on his skin.

“Absolutely, yes he would,” Yuta says firmly, pulling the box back towards himself. “And besides, isn’t that, like, unsanitary?” he says, eyeing Ten dubiously.

“Are you kidding? Glass is so easy to clean,” Ten says, experimentally raising the dildo to brush over his lips – just to see how it would feel. “You can just spray it with Windex or something.”

“Windex?” Yuta repeats, incredulous. “You want Windex in your ass?”

Ten shrugs, pulling the glass piece away from his mouth. “Do I look like I know how to clean shit? It was just a thought.” He puts it back in the box along with the others, then pulls out the knobbed one. “Do you think he actually uses these? Fuck, that’s so hot,” he groans, imagining Johnny Seo kneeling over this very same box, carefully selecting his toy of choice.

Yuta stands, then looks around the room with his hands on his hips. “Alright, there’s nothing else in here. Let’s see if we can find where he keeps his watches.”

“Hold on – ” Ten says, dropping the dildo back in its resting place (it fits perfectly; the velvet case must have been custom made), then shoves the box back under the bed. He stands and flops down on Johnny Seo’s impeccably made bed, stretches out his legs luxuriously and pulls a pillow behind his head. He grabs a patterned throw pillow and hugs it to his chest. “Take my picture first. Wait – ” He climbs off the bed and reaches under the bed for the silver box. He tosses off the lid and picks up the green-and-blue dildo. He climbs back onto the bed and falls onto his back again, then holds the glass up to face with his lips slightly parted. 

Yuta laughs, then his face changes when Ten doesn’t move. “Ten, are you serious?”

“So?” Ten retorts. “It’s no worse than anything you've done. I won’t share this anywhere, promise.”

Yuta stares at him, then shakes his head. “Somehow that’s worse.” Still, he pulls out his phone. “Okay, fine, but make it quick. You’re going to hell, you know that?”

“See you there,” Ten singsongs, then pulls his lips into a pout when Yuta holds up the phone. Ten’s heart pounds at the realization that he is actually _in Johnny Seo’s bed_. In his _bed_ , where he sleeps – where he fucks. Ten starts to get that dizzy feeling again, and he can’t help the dangerous thoughts that slide in an out of his mind. Johnny Seo lays in this bed at night, probably in his sweatpants and no shirt, to answer emails on his laptop. Maybe he drinks his morning coffee here on a lazy Sunday morning, watching the local news and reading the paper. Maybe he brings his dates here after a long night, maybe he lays them flat on the bed and crawls up towards them, kissing their feet and moving up their legs, to the soft flesh on their inner thighs, then even higher … maybe he ties their wrists to the backboard and slowly, delicately, pushes one of the –

“Alright, got it. I’ll send them to you later,” Yuta says, staring at his phone and swiping his thumb across the screen. Ten is grateful that Yuta isn’t looking at him at that moment: his face is flushed, his breathing heavy, and his dick half-hard in his jeans. He rolls off the bed and smooths down the sheets, places the dildo carefully back in its box, then gives a final glance at the bed before walking back to the closet to help Yangyang put everything they’re not taking back in its place. His heart sits heavy in his stomach with the knowledge that this is probably the closest he’ll ever get to Johnny Seo.

///

Ten lays on his bed later that night, surrounded by a pile of hoodies and shirts. He can’t stop staring at the picture Yuta had sent him. He spritzes the perfume over himself, letting it settle onto his face and on the clothes around him. He breathes in deep, then pulls the hem of his shirt into his mouth to keep from screaming. 

///

Ten settles back into the leather couch, biting back a smirk as he feels Yukhei’s eyes on him. He meets Yukhei’s gaze for just a moment, then turns away. Yukhei is so good-looking he never had to learn tact, and as such, flirting was never something he ever actively had to employ. As a result, his advances have always been bumbling, painfully obvious. Ten has indulged him a few times, those nights when Yukhei’s shoulders looked particularly broad or his warm brown eyes lingered on Ten just a bit longer than they normally did, but he never regretted it (far from it, in fact; for all his bumbling, Yukhei has a … reputation, and it is well-deserved. _Very_ well-deserved). As Ten had explained it to a half-interested Yuta several times, Yukhei was nice to have simmering on the back burner – toss a bit of spice his way every now and then and Yukhei’d be more than happy to lap it up – but never as the main dish. 

Around him, his friends are singing or posing for pictures, their voices lost in the pounding swell of the music of the club. He grabs the vape pen that hangs loosely from Yuta’s fingertips and takes a shallow hit, then pushes it off to the person next to him. As he exhales, he lets his gaze rove around the dark room of the club, looking for anyone to catch his interest. His eyes wander past the dance floor, over the velvet-roped VIP section in the back, to the bar.

Then, his heart drops to his stomach.

Standing by the bar, miraculously alone, is Johnny Seo.

Johnny Seo – as much as Ten can’t fully believe it, it is undeniably him – with his long, muscular legs wrapped in black jeans (third drawer from the top, in the black walnut dresser in his bedroom), his broad chest nearly bursting out of a skin-tight chartreuse turtleneck (second floor walk-in closet, arranged by color), is leaning against the bar and chatting with the bartender, running his hand through his dark hair. His jewelry is modest, with just the glint of what looks like a Rolex on his wrist (the leather-bound box in his closet, hidden behind his shoes). He doesn’t need any more adornment, though; the look is simple, elegant, masculine. It looks good. _God_ , does it look good. Ten’s fingers tingle, imagining the feel of Johnny’s soft sweater under his fingertips – the quality of the fabric, he can attest to himself – in an almost obscene contrast with the hardness of the muscle underneath (the hardness of the muscle, Ten can’t personally attest to – but if the dozens of pictures saved on his phone are anything to go by, Ten is willing to make an educated guess).

“Ten?” A voice snaps him out of his reverie, and he looks around, annoyed. Yukhei had somehow switched seats with the person sitting next to him, and was now grinning lazily at him, a beer bottle dwarfed in his massive hands.

“Hey,” Ten says, looking warily up at Yukhei. He slings a ridiculously long arm over the couch behind Ten and leans in, voice raised over the music.

“You look good today. New clothes?” Yukhei winks. Yukhei, despite being one of the first to know about their late-night adventures – he had been one of their first customers, in fact – was fully incapable of keeping his mouth shut. Yukhei himself is wearing a heavy, gold Versace chain that looks suspiciously like the one from Jongin Kim’s closet.

Ten nods distractedly, already searching back through the crowd to find Johnny Seo. “Yeah, totally. You looking to buy?”

Yukhei grins wider. “No … unless you want to give me this.” He pinches the sleeve of Ten’s oversized t-shirt and slowly rubs the fabric between his long fingers.

“Nice try, honey,” Ten says, patting Yukhei placatingly on the knee. Yukhei visibly deflates, but his giant smile is quick to return. He takes a big gulp of his beer, looks around, then grabs Jungwoo and pulls him easily to standing. Jungwoo flushes as he follows Yukhei to the dance floor, clutching his arm. 

His view of the bar had been obscured by a sudden swell of people, but the crowd thins for just a moment and Ten sees Johnny Seo still standing there, in all his chartreuse-clad glory, lit by a strobe light from overhead.

“I’m going to get a drink,” he announces to no one in particular, and rises from his seat. He weaves between the dancing club-goers, pulling down the collar of the shirt – Johnny Seo’s shirt, he remembers with a thrill – as he goes, revealing his collarbone. He leans against the far end of the bar, opposite to where Johnny Seo is standing. As tempted as he is to stare (and goddamn, is he tempted), he puts on his best expression of studied boredom and drums his fingers against the sticky surface of the bar, shifting his shoulder so the loose shirt slips down even more.

Eventually, one of the bartenders makes his way to Ten. “Vodka cranberry!” Ten shouts over the music. The bartender nods at him, giving him a once over, then holds out his hand.

Ten rolls his eyes. “Oh, come on, really?” The bartender just raises an eyebrow at him and starts turning away.

“Okay, okay,” Ten mutters, pulling the fake driver’s license out of his back pocket. He slips the ID into the bartender’s outstretched palm and tries to look as much like 32-year-old David Liu from Hawaii as possible. The bartender looks back and forth between Ten and the ID, his eyebrows disappearing into his bangs. After what feels like an eternity, the bartender shrugs and hands it back to him before reaching under the bar for a glass and setting about making the drink.

Pleased, Ten slips the piece of cheap plastic back into his pocket. He sneaks another glance towards the end of the bar, only to have his brain turn to complete static when he finds Johnny Seo’s eyes on him, looking at him over his drink. His face heats up and looks away quickly, heart pounding against his ribcage. 

He trains his eyes on the bartender, resisting the overwhelming temptation to run for the hills, and tries to control his breathing. He is starting to feel unpleasantly sober, and silently wills the bartender to hurry it up. After what feels like an eternity, the bartender finally sets the drink in front of him and leans over the counter. “Card, cash, or tab?” he shouts.

Before Ten has a chance to open his mouth to answer, a voice cuts through the music. “Put it in on my tab.”

Ten swallows drily and looks up. Standing next to him, one hundred feet tall and with the face of a Greek god, is Johnny Seo. Johnny Seo leans an elbow on the bar and smiles down at him. Ten blinks. Yuta must have had something stronger than nicotine in his pen, because surely Johnny Seo is not actually this close to him. The sound of the music falls away, and all Ten hears is the rushing of blood between his ears. This close, Johnny Seo is – is –

Handsome doesn’t even come close to describing it. He is unreal. Electrifying. Magnetic. One hundred times more imposing than he appears on screen, and yet, there is a softness about him, too. A warmth that seems to radiate off him, enveloping Ten like a second skin. His shoulders span the length of the room. His legs stretch up to the clouds. The Himalayas, the Andes, and the Rocky Mountains combined all pale in comparison to the contours of the muscles visible beneath the tight fabric of Johnny Seo’s shirt.

Then, Ten dares to meet his eyes. As though he would be worthy of such a thing. The eyes look back at him, kind and penetrating all at once. Johnny smiles again, and all Ten can do is stare back.

Johnny Seo opens his mouth and moves his lips. Ten follows the movement, his mouth going dry as he realizes how goddamn soft they look. What would it be like, Ten wonders, to feel those lips on his neck, on his chest, between his teeth? Johnny Seo cocks his head and his lips open once again.

“I said, I hope you don’t mind. I just couldn’t let someone so pretty pay for their own drinks.”

Ten blinks again. A tiny voice in his head, screaming at him across the abyss of his dazed, horny thoughts, wakes him up. He realizes he should probably stop staring, so he looks down at the drink in his hand and wills himself to respond.

“Oh, really?” he says, his voice coming out steadier than he was expecting.

“Mhmm,” Johnny Seo says. Ten sneaks another glance to find Johnny Seo’s eyes wandering down his face, over his neck and shoulders, and down his body. Instinctively, he angles his hips. “I like your shirt,” Johnny Seo says appraisingly. “I have one just like it. You have great taste.” 

“So do you,” Ten replies, looking up at Johnny through his eyelashes. His flirting instincts, which had been mysteriously MIA since the moment Johnny Seo had stepped into his personal space, start to make a much-needed reappearance. As though Johnny Seo can read his mind (which is maybe not too far out of the realm of possibilities, given the intensity of his gaze), Ten tries not to think too much about how true that statement is. About how he knows, firsthand, how good Johnny Seo’s taste really is.

Johnny Seo takes a sip of his drink, then sets it down on the bar next to Ten’s.

“So, tell me …” Johnny Seo is looking at him expectantly, and Ten belatedly realizes that he is asking for his name.

“Ten,” he says quickly.

“Ten,” Johnny Seo repeats, as though getting a feel for it in his mouth. “I’m Johnny.” _I know_ , Ten screams in his brain. _I know, I know, I know._ “So, tell me, Ten. What do you do, besides walk around looking like that all day?”

For the second time that night, Ten’s brain goes full static-mode. Other than the obvious issue of telling Johnny Seo exactly how he has been paying his rent for the past few months, everything he can think to say falls short of Johnny Seo’s accomplishments. So, he blurts out the first thing that comes to his mind.

“I’m a student.”

Surprisingly, Johnny’s face lights up in genuine interest. “Really? Where?”

“UCLA?” Ten clears his throat. “UCLA. I’m studying – ” _Crap._ “I’m studying business management.” He has no idea if UCLA even has a business management major, but as far as white lies go, it isn’t too far detached from reality.

Johnny Seo takes another drink and smiles, the glint of something dangerous in his eye. “Smart _and_ sexy. It must be my lucky night.” Ten’s face burns, and he takes a sip of his own drink to steady himself. “I remember my UCLA days,” Johnny Seo continues. “It’s been, what, ten years since I graduated? It feels like I was just there.”

Ten almost chokes on his drink. Of course, he had to pick the school that Johnny Seo had gone to. Trying to keep his voice steady and his face calm, he asks “Oh, no kidding? What did you study?”

Johnny Seo throws back his head and laughs. “Theater, believe it or not.”

“You’re an actor?” Ten asks, pulling his face into an expression of innocent curiosity. He feels a strange and sudden urge to laugh, as though he hadn’t seen nearly every movie Johnny Seo has ever been in. As though he hadn’t snuck a peek at the script watermarked with CONFIDENTIAL on every page, with Johnny Seo’s lines highlighted in blue, that had sat on the desk in his study.

“You could say that,” Johnny Seo says. His eyes search Ten’s face. Ten stirs his drink with his straw and returns his gaze, growing bolder. Johnny Seo can’t read his mind - he has no idea (how could he?) - and right now, Johnny Seo is looking at him in a way that makes the blood pound between his legs.

Johnny Seo shifts closer. Ten’s neck hurts from looking up at his face, so he settles on his broad chest instead. Johnny Seo moves even closer, moving his hand so it rests a hairs-width away from Ten’s on the bar. He leans in and bends down far enough for his lips to hover just over Ten’s ear. “I have to tell you, I think we’d have a lot of fun together. What do you think?”

All Ten can do is bite his lip and nod, causing Johnny Seo’s lips to brush over his ear. Johnny Seo pulls back suddenly and smiles. “Unfortunately,” he says, “and I really do hate to say this, but I have somewhere to be tomorrow morning. And as much as I’d love to cancel my plans for you, I don’t really have that luxury in this case.” Ten’s mind spins off its axis and lands somewhere on the floor by his feet. “Can I have your number instead?” Johnny Seo reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his phone. He opens a blank contact and holds it out, the sincere look on his face contrasting so sweetly with the suggestive tone dripping from his voice.

At that moment, Ten forgets about their thirteen-year age difference, about Johnny Seo’s wealth and status. He is no stranger to feeling wanted, desired, even needed; this is that, but more. At that moment, Johnny Seo is just a man. A man whom Ten wishes would push him up against a wall and make him feel so good that he forgets his own name.

But then, the feeling of desire gives way to something else. A tight feeling coils in the pit of his stomach. For the briefest of moments – it passes so fast Ten can almost convince himself it isn’t there – a pang of regret flashes through him. Somewhere, deep, deep down in his darkest, muddiest corner of his mind, he wishes that he had never stepped foot inside Johnny Seo’s house.

As quickly as it appears, however, the feeling is gone, dissipating into the hazy air of the club.

Ten pretends to think, watching Johnny Seo’s face carefully for a reaction. He takes a sip of his drink, swirling the straw around with his tongue. He casts a quick glance back at his friends to see if they have noticed, but finds that Yuta has Doyoung pushed up against couch, smearing his lip gloss all over Doyoung’s neck. Jungwoo and Yukhei are nowhere to be found. Ten pulls his attention back to the phone in Johnny Seo’s hand.

“Well, alright. Since you asked so nicely,” Ten says with an exaggerated sweetness, taking the phone and typing in his number. He puts a heart next to his name, then hands the phone back to Johnny Seo. “Just don’t text me during the day, I’m really busy with school.”

“I’m sure you are,” Johnny Seo returns, pocketing his phone and smiling down at Ten with a look that makes Ten’s knees feel like jelly and his dick feel like a loaf of sourdough in the proving drawer. As Johnny Seo downs his drink, Ten stares shamelessly at the muscles in his neck. God, would he love to get his mouth on that neck.

Suddenly, Johnny Seo is leaning close to him again, brushing his lips over Ten’s ear. “It was nice to meet you,” he says, his voice low and barely audible over the music.

Ten shivers, then pulls back and flashes Johnny Seo what he hopes is his most alluring smile. “Totally,” he says, smirking around the straw on his tongue.

Then, Johnny Seo is gone, and Ten is left alone with his drink, his elevated heartrate, and a weird, painful feeling in his chest that won’t go away.

///

Ten is hunched over his laptop, busy scrolling through the private Instagram page. He double-checks the direct messages, looks at a list on his phone, and changes the captions on a carousel of Sooyoung Park’s heels to say SOLD – DON’T DM ME. He uploads a picture from his desktop of one of their older products that never sold, a patterned dress shirt, with the caption: TAEMIN LEE // GENUINE PRADA. SERIOUS OFFERS ONLY - PRICE ON REQUEST.

He becomes so absorbed in the task that he nearly drops his phone when a text notification pings. He glances at the screen, expecting to see a message from Yuta or maybe Yukhei – who had been bothering him about some new belts since last week – and is annoyed to see that the message comes from an unknown number. _Probably just some high school students looking for product_ , he thinks, tossing the phone to the side. Suddenly, he looks back down at the phone, his heart quickly picking up its pace. _Wait a minute, could it be …?_

He grabs his phone off the bed and scrambles to unlock it. His hands are shaking before he reads the message, but when he does, it is all he can do to keep himself from dropping the phone again.

From: Unknown Number

_Hey, this is Johnny from last night :) I hope I have the right number …_

Johnny.

Johnny from Last Night.

As in, Johnny fucking Seo. Fuck _._

Ten shuts the laptop and lays back on his bed, his head spinning. He raises his phone and peeks at the message again, then suppresses a squeal.

He turns his head to look at the clock on the wall, trying to regain control of his breathing as he watches the minutes tick by. Finally, after five grueling minutes have passed, Ten sits back up and unlocks his phone. He rereads the message just to make sure it is real – it is – and hovers his thumbs over the keyboard. He spends another two minutes composing and deleting responses in his head before he starts typing, his fingers shaking and his heart pounding in his ears. 

To: Unknown Number

_I hope you do too ;)_

As soon as he hits send, Ten makes a face at himself. _Why did I write that? Winking face, really?_ But before he can start spiraling too hard, the typing bubble appears, disappears, then reappears.

From: Unknown Number

_Is it fair of me to assume that this is Ten?_

Before he bothers with a response, Ten is pulling up a blank contact and saving Johnny Seo’s number.

To: Johnny <3

_This is :p_

From: Johnny <3

_Well, then today is my lucky day :)_

_What are you up to?_

To: Johnny <3

_Just some work for school_

_It’s pretty boring_

(A complete lie, of course, but Johnny doesn’t need to know that).

From: Johnny <3

_Hm … how would you feel about a distraction?_

Ten’s face heats up as he rereads the words. He swallows, then types a reply.

To: Johnny <3

_That depends_

_What kind of a distraction?_

From: Johnny <3

_I can think of a few things_

_How would you feel about a picture?_

To: Johnny <3

_Of your handsome face?_

From: Johnny <3

_I can send that too, if you want_

_Try a little lower_

Ten doesn’t even try to bite back the embarrassing sound that escapes his throat. Already, he feels the familiar rush of blood below his waist. He presses his palm over his sweatpants, feeling himself grow harder by the second. Somewhere in a corner of his brain not clouded by sudden, pounding arousal, he thinks that, if this is Johnny’s effect on him from just the mere implication of a picture, the actual picture might make his head explode.

To: Johnny <3

_I wouldn’t be too mad at that ;)_

From: Johnny <3

_Good_

_Only if you really want it, though_

To: Johnny <3

_I do_

_Please_

Ten stares at his phone for several minutes until it buzzes in his hand.

From: Johnny <3

[picture(s) attached]

Ten takes a deep, steadying breath, then opens the image file. The first one is of Johnny’s face, barely visible in the low light of wherever he is. Even in the graininess of the picture, however, he is breathtaking. Ten zooms in, tracing his finger over the shadow cast by Johnny’s full lips, then up, to where the dark sweep of his bangs nearly obscures his cat-like eyes. He saves the image to his camera roll, exhales, and scrolls to the next picture.

“Fuck,” he says aloud, staring open-mouthed at the image on his phone screen.

In the picture, Johnny has his hand wrapped around his fully erect dick – even encased by his long fingers, it is clearly huge, sitting flushed and thick in his palm. Entranced, Ten zooms in, his mouth watering at the sight. “Fuck,” he says again, and hesitates for only a moment before saving the picture too.

Ten flops onto his back and holds the phone over his face.

To: Johnny <3

_Wow_

_What were you thinking about to get that hard?_

From: Johnny <3

_What do you think, baby?_

_You_

_Your pretty lips_

_How it would feel to kiss you, to hear you moan in my ear_

Ten whines and slips a hand under the waistband of his sweatpants. He gasps, not even minding the dryness of his hand as he grips himself.

To: Johnny <3

_I want that so bad, you have no idea_

_Want to feel you_

From: Johnny <3

_I think we can arrange that_

“Ten!”

Ten looks up in irritation at the sound of Yanyang’s voice coming from down the hallway. He ignores Yangyang and looks back down at Johnny’s latest message.

“Ten! What are you doing? We’re leaving in five!”

He glances at the clock. That’s right, he had completely forgotten: they were supposed to hit up Yukhei’s party later that evening, and Yuta wanted to go visit his dealer over in Venice first.

“Calm down, I’ll be right there!” He shouts back, glancing down at the conversation and ruefully pulling his hand out of his pants.

“And bring those Gucci belts with you, Yuta said that Yukhei says he’s gonna buy some for him and his cousin!”

“Okay, chill!” Ten yells back, hardly bothering to mask the annoyance in his voice. He sighs, then rereads the messages. As much as he desperately wants to see where this is going … it might not be a bad idea to leave Johnny wanting more.

Suddenly, a thought pops into his head – a dangerous thought. Reckless, some might say. Smirking to himself (and ignoring the tiny voice in the back of his head telling him that it’s a terrible idea), he climbs off the bed and walks to his closet. He runs his hand over the garments inside before pulling out the black Vetements hoodie with the small white logo over the chest. He quickly peels off his sweatpants and underwear, snuggles into the sweatshirt, and climbs back onto his bed.

He artfully rumbles the sheets underneath him, then sits on the bed with his knees folded under him and his thighs slightly parted. He wraps the hem of the sweatshirt in one hand and pulls it down to just barely cover himself, the fabric pooling around his hips. With his other hand, he angles his phone camera towards himself so just his mouth and lower body are showing, bites his lip, and snaps the picture. With shaking fingers, he hits send.

To: Johnny <3

_I have to go now, sorry_

_Miss me :*_

His body is trembling from the adrenaline that courses through him, and he rocks back and forth on his knees, his heart pounding out of his chest as he waits for Johnny’s reply. He doesn’t wait long, as Johnny writes back immediately.

From: Johnny <3

_Jesus_

_You’re going to make me lose my mind_

_I want to see you again_

_I’ll be at the Playhouse tomorrow_

_See you there?_

As tempted as Ten is to write back, he fights the urge – he knows the power of leaving a guy on read.

Ten climbs off his bed with a stupid, giddy grinning plastered across his face. He keeps on the hoodie and pulls on a pair of leather pants, then grabs the tote bag of designer belts from under his bed and makes his way down the hallway.

The whole night out, his phone burns a searing hole in his back pocket. The messages from Johnny – real, actual Johnny Seo – feel like a talisman, weaving a layer of protective warmth over his skin. They make him feel invincible, somehow. On top of the world, and completely untouchable.

Almost.

///

Ten stands on the street outside the Playhouse, shivering in his artfully distressed Givenchy tee. The night had grown unusually chilly for this time of year, with a cold wind blowing in from the Pacific Ocean that makes his skin prickle and his body tremble.

He hugs his arms around himself and walks up the bouncer. It is the same beefy man who is always there, but when Ten approaches him, the bouncer gives him a once-over, then looks away.

“Get in line, sweetheart!” Jeers a man with slicked-back hair, standing three people from the front. Ten ignores him and clears his throat.

“I know Doyoung,” he says, raising himself on his tiptoes. But even with the added height of his chunky Prada boots, the top of his head barely reaches the bouncer’s chest.

Without looking at him, the bouncer says, “That’s nice,” and pulls back the rope to let a pair of tall blonde women inside.

“I mean – I was just here with Yuta two nights ago. You let us in, remember?”

“You on the list?” the bouncer says, still not looking down at him.

Ten huffs. “What list? Can you just let me in, please? Doyoung can vouch for me.”

When the bouncer finally does look at him, it is with a look of such pure, unadulterated judgement that Ten almost shrinks back into himself. Instead, he squares his shoulders and steps closer to the bouncer. “Look, just let me call him, then he can – ”

“What’s my name?”

Ten stares blankly at the man, who lets another group inside after checking their names on his clipboard.

“What?”

“I said, what’s my name?”

“How should I know that?” Ten retorts, his exasperation spilling into his voice. “Just – ”

“Yuta knows my name.” The bouncer grins coldly down at him. “Look, baby, if you’re not on the list, you’re not getting in without waiting on line like the rest of these people.”

It is all Ten can do to keep himself from stomping his foot in annoyance. Instead, he rolls his eyes and slinks away down the street towards the end of the line, grumbling bitterly to himself.

If he had come with Yuta, they would have gotten in, no problem. It was too bad, then, that Yuta had no idea he was here.

Ten isn’t sure why he hadn’t told Yuta that he was meeting Johnny. He isn’t sure why he hadn’t told Yuta anything about Johnny, neither about their meeting at the club nor the fact that he has a picture of Johnny’s beautiful, fully erect cock saved on his camera roll. Yuta is normally the first to know about the guys he meets, especially if the guys in question boast follower counts in the thousands or tens of thousands (in this case, millions). 

Yet something – no more than a weird feeling in the back of his throat whenever he opened his mouth to speak – had kept him from telling.

So, he finds himself alone at the back of the line at the Playhouse, shivering his ass off in a skimpy t-shirt, standing behind a group of (what are clearly) tourists wearing some of the ugliest cork wedges he’s ever seen in his life.

Just as he checks his phone for the seventieth time that minute, a shadow passes over him. He looks up in surprise, only to come face to face (well, face to chest) with Johnny Seo.

When Johnny smiles at him, the wind chill disappears in an instant. A crack appears in the sidewalk and swallows the group of tourists whole. The moon and the stars go dark, one by one, leaving only the radiance of Johnny’s smile to illuminate the night. Ten’s heart swells and pumps champagne, sweet and bubbling, through his veins. 

Before Ten’s spiritual orgasm can come to completion, Johnny breaks eye contact and frowns at the line.

“It’ll take you forever to get inside,” he says, using his superior height to see over everyone in front of them. “There must be fifty people in front of you.” All Ten can do is nod, though Johnny doesn’t see it.

“Well, alright. Guess we’d better get comfortable,” Johnny says resolutely, moving in to stand next to him. Ten stares up at Johnny, entirely confused, and opens his mouth before his brain can tell him otherwise.

“What?”

Johnny’s smile grows as he looks back down at Ten. For the first time since his arrival, Johnny seems to really take him in, from the holes of his shirt to the ripped knees on his jeans. Instead of answering, Johnny shrugs off his leather jacket (coat closet by the front door) and places it carefully over Ten’s shoulders. The fabric smells like him, and is still warm from his body.

“It’s cold – I wouldn’t want you getting sick while we wait.”

“Why are you waiting in line?” Ten asks, then mentally slaps himself in the face for forgetting that _Johnny doesn’t know that Ten knows who he is, dumbass_.

Thankfully, Johnny doesn’t seem to notice anything strange about the question. “So that I can stand with you, of course,” he says, as though the answer is obvious.

And so, they stand. The line moves slowly, and Ten keeps sneaking glances up at Johnny as they wait. After about the tenth time he does this, Johnny catches him looking. He grins down at Ten, and Ten forces himself to hold the eye contact. Johnny doesn’t break it, and Ten starts to feel a flush climbing up his neck from the way Johnny is looking at him. He could probably die like this: Johnny Seo staring at him from his perch on Mt. Olympus, making him feel tiny. Johnny should probably slap him for everything he’s done. The thought makes Ten blush even harder.

Almost without thinking, he reaches out and grasps Johnny’s forearm. Johnny looks down in surprise as Ten traces the cool metal of his watch, spinning it around Johnny’s wrist and admiring how the light reflects off it. It isn’t ostentatious – just a relatively simple white-gold band with moss green face – though Ten now knows that a watch like this costs upwards of $35,000. He knows a few college baseball players at USC who’d easily pay 75% of the market price for it.

Ten watches the second hand tick its rote course around the watch face. Then, struck with a sudden idea, he uses his fingernail to pull out the crown and rotate it until the hour hand sits just before the “II.” He pushes the crown back in and drops Johnny’s hand. “It’s so late,” he muses, pouting up at Johnny.

Johnny gives him a curious look and raises his wrist to his face. He cocks his head at the watch. “You’re right,” he says, eyes flicking back to Ten’s. “It’s almost two in the morning. Where did the time go?”

Ten shrugs, looking up at Johnny through his eyelashes. “I don’t usually stay out this late.”

A dangerous smile creeps across Johnny’s face. “Mm. Neither do I.”

They look at each for a long moment.

“We should probably head home,” Ten says, keeping his voice low so Johnny has to move closer to hear it.

“You read my mind,” Johnny says, nodding slowly in agreement. He steps forward. Ten steps back, closer to the brick wall behind them, and Johnny follows. Ten swallows as Johnny’s large frame casts a shadow over him, and he traces his eyes up and down the long column of Johnny’s neck.

“It’s probably not safe for me to take a cab home this late,” Ten mutters, his heart pounding into his throat as Johnny starts fingering the zipper of the leather jacket slung around Ten’s shoulders.

“No,” Johnny agrees. He moves in even closer. The sound of the club behind them drowns away to nothing until all Ten hears is the sound of his own breathing and the clinking of the metal zipper. “I’ll drive you home.”

“I don't want to go home.”

Time stands still. Johnny’s eyes glow in the light reflecting off the marquis above them.

Then, Johnny steps away, leaving Ten gasping for air.

“Let’s go,” Johnny says, his expression carefully composed, though Ten can see desire cracking through the seams. “I’m parked two blocks away.” Ten nods and stumbles off the wall, falling in next to Johnny as they set off down the sidewalk, away from the rowdy front entrance of the Playhouse.

Several heads turn as they pass, and it takes Ten a minute to remember why.

Johnny is just so – so _real_. Despite his mind-boggling good looks and world-stopping charisma, despite the weight of his name and all that it carries, Ten is surprised by how natural if feels to be with Johnny. He doesn’t feel like a celebrity. He just feels like Johnny. (And again – Ten fights down the nasty feeling that festers and coils in his gut).

Johnny’s car is, as would be expected, just as beautiful as he is. As Johnny unlocks it, Ten approaches the car reverently, running his hand along the matte black fender, then stepping back to admire the Porsche crest embedded into the hood.

“You like it that much?” Johnny says as he holds the passenger door open for Ten.

“Yeah, your car is fucking sexy,” Ten responds, and is rewarded with a dazzling laugh from Johnny. He climbs into the passenger seat, barely able to contain the giddy grin that keeps trying to push its way on to his face.

“I think so too,” Johnny chuckles, then shuts the door behind Ten and walks around to the driver’s side.

If the car is sexy, it is nothing compared to Johnny in the driver’s seat. The proximity in and of itself is maddening; the way Ten could easily rest his hand on Johnny’s long thigh, could bite his ear; the way the heat from their shared breaths fills the cream-leather coated interior of the car with an unspoken tension that makes Ten’s head spin and his heart race.

They drive through downtown, through the flashing lights of Hollywood Boulevard, towards the freeway. Panes of light slide over and off Johnny’s face, alternately illuminating him and casting him in shadow. Ten stares at Johnny’s hands on the wheel, fighting down the urge to climb into his lap and suck one of his fingers into his mouth. He feels like he is going crazy; his thoughts don’t even seem like his own.

Johnny doesn’t speak much. He seems to be in his own world, eyes on the road, which gives Ten plenty of opportunity to stare at his side profile. At some point, he realizes that the corner of Johnny’s mouth is quirked up. As they crawl up the off-ramp towards the freeway entrance, Johnny lifts a hand off the wheel and lets it rest on Ten’s thigh. Ten’s muscles jump under the touch, and Johnny gives them a squeeze in response.

They make it about five minutes on the freeway before the late-night traffic slows to a complete stop. Peering at the stretch of cars in front of them, Johnny sighs and puts the car in park. He drums his fingers on the wheel for a moment as though thinking, then tightens his grip on Ten’s thigh. With his other hand, he turns on the radio at sets it at low volume, filling the car with a low, pounding bass that pulses through Ten’s body. When Johnny starts massaging his leg, Ten squirms in his seat and lets out a shuddering breath.

When Johnny finally turns to him, Ten is almost knocked back in his seat from the heat in his eyes. And suddenly, Johnny is grasping his jaw and pulling him across the center console until their lips press together. Ten can’t help but moan into Johnny’s mouth, the tension that had been building all night finally snapping. And the kiss feels so good – so right. Their lips fit together perfectly, and his tongue seems to know its way around the inside of Johnny’s mouth as though they had kissed thousands of times before. The heart-pounding exhilaration of the moment builds and grows with the stomach-clenching arousal pooling in his gut. When Johnny breaks away for a moment, Ten sees how dazed he looks, how his chest rises and falls rapidly, how swollen his lips look in the faint red sea of taillights around them. He pounces on Johnny again, finally getting his hand on Johnny’s chest, feeling the solid muscle under his palm as he runs his hand over Johnny’s pecs.

Johnny breaks away again, holding Ten’s face in front of his own. “You’re dangerous, aren’t you?” Johnny says between panting breaths.

Ten turns his head to nip at Johnny’s fingertips. “You have no idea,” he murmurs, smirking as his hands find their way to Johnny’s belt buckle. He whimpers as Johnny bites his lip and kisses him again, his hands shaking as he opens the clasp and fumbles around for the zipper.

Johnny groans into his mouth when Ten grasps him, applying firm pressure but not moving his hand. He loves the feeling of Johnny throbbing under his palm, feeling him grow harder the longer they kiss. When Ten can’t take it any longer – and he senses Johnny can’t either, from the way he keeps pushing up his hips – he pulls away from Johnny’s mouth and lowers his head.

The moan that Ten hears when he takes Johnny into his mouth is easily the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard. It sends a shockwave of arousal through him, laced with dizzying feeling of satisfaction. Johnny pets over his upper back, finally settling his hand on the back of Ten’s head. He runs his nails along Ten’s scalp and pushes down on his head, gentle yet firm. Ten moans around him, savoring the way Johnny twitches on his tongue when he takes him deeper. The angle is awkward and the gear shift digs into his stomach but he barely notices, not when Johnny keeps groaning so sweetly above him. 

A loud honking from outside the car causes Johnny to curse and Ten to jerk up, banging the back of his head on the steering wheel. He looks up at Johnny through wide eyes, still holding Johnny’s cock in his hand. Johnny fumbles his hand around Ten’s torso, and it takes Ten a second to realize that Johnny is trying to reach the gear shift. He shifts up slightly, just enough for Johnny to put the car into drive, then – delirious from how turned on he is – leans down and takes Johnny back into his mouth, twisting his tongue in a way that makes Johnny’s breath hitch.

Johnny curses and the car swerves, causing his cock to hit the back of Ten’s throat. Ten whines in protest, eyes watering, but he only pulls off for a second before swallowing him down again.

“Ten, shit – ” Johnny groans above him, and Ten’s own cock twitches from how strained Johnny’s voice sounds. He hums in response, and is rewarded with another deep groan from Johnny. “Are you okay? Oh my god – ” Johnny cuts himself off to curse, and the car swerves again. Ten can’t tell how fast the car is moving, and he doesn’t really care at this point. All that matters is the feeling of Johnny pulsing on his tongue, heavy and warm. He had imagined so many times, staring at the picture on his phone, what it would be like to have Johnny Seo – no, just Johnny – between his lips. He wants to freeze time, to keep the moment forever locked in the safest corner of his mind. He feels lightheaded, high, completely blissed out, as he digs his nails into Johnny’s thigh and tightens his lips, pulling a shuddering moan from Johnny above him.

“Ten,” Johnny chokes out, almost in warning. When Ten ignores him, Johnny grabs Ten by the back of his head and pulls him up. Ten, breathing heavily, gazes up at Johnny, dick throbbing in his pants at the way Johnny is gripping his hair.

Johnny spares him a glance, then fixes his eyes again on the road ahead of them. Traffic has started moving at a regular pace. The other cars on the road stream around them, and the maze of taillights makes Ten feel like his eyes are out of focus.

“Save it for later,” Johnny says. Ten notices his knuckles are white on the steering wheel, his other hand still holding Ten firmly by the back of the head. Ten nods as best he can. The promise of _later_ sends a thrill down his spine.

As Johnny drives down the off-ramp towards the Valley, Ten starts to recognize the landmarks. The stores, gated mansions, and estates pass by in a familiar pattern as they make their way through the upscale neighborhood, climbing up the long hill towards Johnny’s house.

The closer they get, Ten starts to feel a little sick. As his increasingly anxious thoughts tumble around his brain, he tries to keep his face steady. _Johnny would never know. How would he find out?_ _It’s just for a night. Play it cool. You have everything under control._

Johnny doesn’t notice anything – _why would he?_ – when they pull into the driveway. He doesn’t notice anything strange in Ten’s face when they approach the front door, or when Johnny ushers him inside.

Stepping in through the front door of Johnny’s house, Ten is hit with a sudden feeling of déjà vu. Is it still déjà vu if he _had_ been here before? Maybe it is closer to the feeling of walking around inside a dream: everything looks exactly the same as it had before, and yet now, with Johnny standing next to him, it feels entirely surreal. The front hallway seems smaller, narrower, with Johnny’s huge frame taking up most of the space. He pretends to look around in interest as Johnny takes the leather jacket from his shoulders and hangs it up in the coat closet. “Nice house.”

Johnny chuckles. “Thank you.”

Ten follows him down the hallway. “So …” he begins, his nerves suddenly getting the best of him. He knows exactly why he is here, and he figures that the quicker they get to it, the fewer chances he’ll have to give himself away.

“Hm?” Johnny repeats, looking down at him. They walk into the kitchen, and Ten thinks that he might throw up. The espresso machine, the magnets on the fridge, the granite surfaces – it is all too much.

Ten doesn’t know what he had been intending to say, as his thoughts seem to fly out of his brain the moment they enter it. He forces himself to say something. “So … are you going to give me the grand tour?” _Shit – why that?_ He swallows, trying to backtrack. “I mean – I’m dying to see your bedroom.”

“Ah,” Johnny responds, his eyes twinkling dangerously. He crosses the kitchen to pull a bottle of white wine out of the fridge, takes two glasses from a shelf above the sink, and walks back. “How could I deny a request like that?”

And with that, Ten finds himself again in Johnny’s bedroom. The door to the closet is slightly ajar, casting a rectangle of light that stretches all the way to the bed. 

He takes a breath. He is in Johnny’s bed, with Johnny hovering over him, the wine completely forgotten. He takes another breath, and Johnny has his mouth latched onto his neck, pressing their hips together. Another breath and his clothes are off, and Johnny has him on his stomach, kissing his way down his spine to his tailbone. His knees shake as Johnny spreads him open and licks into him, pressing in his tongue in a way that makes Ten’s vision start to blur. The pillowcase smells like Dior cologne.

Ten, faced still pressed into the pillow, stays still when Johnny asks him to.

When Johnny gets up to rummage around under the bed, Ten’s heart jumps into his throat. “I’ll be right back,” Johnny murmurs into his ear, and then he is gone.

Several minutes pass. Ten drops his head between his shoulders, his breathing unsteady and his body flushed as he strains his ears, listening for any hint of what Johnny is doing. He thinks he hears a faint beeping sound, but he doesn’t dare get up to investigate. He isn’t even sure if his legs could support him, given how much his thighs are shaking. He lowers himself onto his forearms and whines into the pillow, growing impatient and yet loving every second of it.

After what feels like an eternity, Johnny finally returns.

Unable to help himself, Ten’s breathing now comes in short bursts, whining on every exhale, as Johnny moves around behind him. The bed sinks, and Ten feels the heat of Johnny’s body behind him. He gasps as a large hand presses onto his lower back, slides up, and presses down on his shoulder blades to angle him higher. He moves willingly, spreading his knees as he goes. Johnny’s hand massages the back of his neck, moves up through his hair, and presses his face firmly into the pillow. Ten pants out, his breath dampening the pillowcase, as Johnny continues running his fingers along his scalp, keeping his head down.

And then, something smooth and unbelievably hot presses up against his rim. He gasps, the sound muffled into the pillow, as it slides deeper, pressing heat inside him. The thing inside of him is angled and curved in such a way that when Johnny turns it slowly, it rubs right against a spot that has Ten sobbing and seeing stars behind his eyes. He can’t wrap his head around the completely unfamiliar feeling, the feeling of being almost burned from the inside out with something slick and curved and hotter than body temperature. The feeling sparks waves of pleasure that pulse through his entire body, from his chest to the soles of his feet.

When Johnny rotates it and eases it in deeper, Ten almost comes right then and there. Instead, he pushes his hips back, grinding against the feeling. Johnny pulls it out and thrusts it back in, and Ten lets out a strangled moan, pleasure sparking deep inside him. Warm lube drips down his thigh. His cock leaks against the sheets, and he rubs himself down as best he can, pathetically, desperately, his body shaking and trembling with every thrust deep inside him. It is smooth and moves inside him easily, almost like it was made for him. Though his thoughts are a dazed mess, he manages to wonder which of Johnny’s dildos is currently inside him, and how exactly Johnny had heated it up to the perfect temperature for it to be just the right amount of painful to make him go insane.

Johnny slows his thrusting and slowly, slowly, slides the dildo out. Ten whimpers as his muscle clench around it as he is left with an empty, exposed feeling. But before he has a chance to turn around and try to get a look at the dildo, Johnny pushes the head of his cock against his swollen entrance. Ten reflexively clenches his muscles at the sudden sensation, and Johnny grits out, “Ten, baby, relax – ” and Ten does, taking a deep breath and relaxing his muscles just enough for Johnny to push inside him.

Ten _sobs_ , his toes curling and his thighs finally giving out, as Johnny eases in deeper. Johnny braces one arm next to his head and uses his other arm to wrap around Ten’s waist and hold him up, just enough for him to pull Ten back onto his cock as he bottoms out with a loud groan.

Already so far gone, Ten feels like he is burning from the inside out. Johnny fills him up so perfectly. He seems to know exactly which angles will make Ten cry out, which pace will have tears welling up at the corners of his eyes. Ten works his hand between his body and the bed to grab at himself, but his hand falls limp when Johnny grasps him by the throat. Johnny doesn’t apply any pressure, but the implication is there – he could, if he wanted, and Ten would let him. He would probably let Johnny do anything to him, if he asked.

Instead, he lays face down on the bed as Johnny uses his knee to push Ten’s thighs further apart, then Johnny fucks him senseless.

Johnny Seo is fucking him.

A tight feeling builds in his gut. Johnny clearly knows his own body – the benefits of being with an older man, Ten thinks – and knows how to make someone else feel good, too. And he can’t believe how _good_ it is, feeling Johnny’s hips flush with his ass, Johnny’s hand wrapped around his neck, Johnny’s mouth against his ear so Ten can hear every hitch in his breathing and every low growl that vibrates through his chest.

Ten is crying; or is he laughing? He feels detached from his own body, wants Johnny to use him – punish him – like he deserves. He is small, awful. He is in heaven. His breaths get punched out of him every time Johnny fucks into him, tears welling in his eyes and heart pounding in his ears, as another wave of sick pleasure racks through him.

Johnny pulls him up by the neck to kiss him, to pant into his mouth, then lets Ten fall back against the bed. Ten's knuckles are white as he clutches the bedsheets in a pitiful vise grip, his fingernails digging into his palm. It isn’t enough – he needs _more_ , greedily, desperately, as he grinds his hips back against Johnny. Once can’t be enough – how can it be? No one has ever made him feel this good, this deliriously blissed out and high on his own pain. No one will ever make him feel this good; he is sure of it. No one else is Johnny Seo.

When Johnny bites the back of his neck and thrusts, Ten whites out. He comes hard onto the bed, clenching around Johnny in spasms. The pillowcase is soaking wet beneath his face. Johnny grunts and pushes in even deeper, before pulling out with a wince. Ten hardly notices, too focused on the waves of pleasure that continue to spread through his body.

Before Ten can fully catch his breath, Johnny roughly flips him over. Ten looks up at him through dazed eyes, watching as Johnny rips off his condom and leans over Ten. Johnny grips his cock and loosely jerks himself off, the tendons in his neck straining and his abs tensing as he works himself through it. Then, his eyes close and he throws back his head as he comes hard onto Ten’s stomach. The awful, depraved part of Ten’s brain thinks that Johnny is too polite – he wants Johnny to make him choke on it.

After a long moment to catch his breath, Johnny collapses next to him with a grunt. His chest heaves and he closes his eyes, pushing his sweaty hair off his brow. Ten watches him lazily, still trying to get his eyes to focus. After a few minutes, the movement of Johnny’s muscular chest slows to a steady rise and fall, his breaths coming out slow and quiet. Ten waves his hand in front of Johnny’s face, but Johnny doesn’t move.

Ten carefully climbs off the bed and looks around for a box of tissues or a towelette, but Johnny doesn’t seem to have any in his bedroom. Ten thinks he remembers seeing some in one of the bathrooms on this floor. He pads quietly out the door and into the dark hallway, treading the familiar route towards the bathroom at the end of the hall.

His legs still feel like jelly and his lower back burns, but he manages to make it all the way to the bathroom without falling over. Once inside, he uses a dampened hand towel to clean his stomach.

Yangyang had taken a bottle of Percocet from the medicine cabinet in this bathroom. Other than that, there was nothing else worth taking.

He doesn’t look at his reflection in the mirror. It isn’t from the shame of what they had done, of everything they had taken and sold.

It is the shame of how _excited_ he feels, standing in Johnny’s bathroom naked with streaks of Johnny’s come still clinging to his stomach, armed with the secret that Johnny would never know. Could never know.

He should hate the thrill. He should hate the adrenaline. But he can’t fool the chemicals in his brain.

When he reenters the bedroom, he nearly jumps out of his skin to find Johnny sitting upright, leaning against the backboard with the sheets loosely wrapped around his legs. “Everything okay?” Johnny asks. Ten stands in the doorway, heart thudding against his ribcage.

“Oh – yeah, I was just looking for the bathroom. I walked into a few closets before I found it,” Ten manages. “Your house is too big.” He feels so deliciously, horribly exposed like this, standing naked in the doorway while Johnny watches him from the bed.

Johnny laughs. “Yeah, you’re not the first one that’s happened to.”

A sudden feeling like vertigo overtakes Ten. “I’ll call a car,” he says, staring at a spot just above Johnny’s eyes. Johnny frowns.

“What? Don’t be ridiculous.”

Johnny rises from the bed. When the sheet falls away, Ten gets his first really good look at Johnny’s naked body. In the low light of the room, Johnny’s muscles take on a softer edge, though his body is no less impressive. His chest and legs are massive, the muscles flexing as he crosses the room towards his closet. Ten watches from the doorway, his breath in his throat. He can’t see inside the closet from this angle, but he hears a drawer open and shut.

When Johnny emerges from the closet, he is carrying a large black t-shirt. He tosses it to Ten, then sits back on the bed. Ten swallows and looks down at the shirt; it is nearly identical to the one he had worn to the club on the night be met Johnny.

When he meets Johnny’s gaze, Johnny grins at him. “Seems like your taste, doesn’t it? Put it on, and come back to bed. Do you need anything – water? Something to eat? Ice pack?”

Ten just shakes his head, dazed, as he pulls the shirt over his head. It hangs on his body in a painfully familiar way, falling low over his collarbone and catching on the swell of his hips. Again, he is hit with the strangest urge to laugh, but he fights it down. He crawls back into bed next to Johnny.

Johnny turns on the TV on the far wall, flipping the channel to a sports commentary show on low volume while Ten pretends to sleep.

A few minutes after the sound of the TV shuts off, along with the light from the bedside lamp, Ten sneaks a glance at Johnny. Johnny seems to be asleep, so Ten flips over onto his side to face Johnny, folding his hands under his head. As he stares at Johnny’s sleeping form, warmth churns heavy in his gut. Johnny looks like a different person when he is asleep. The heady charisma that cloaks him during the day seems to have melted away, replaced instead by a softness, a vulnerability, that makes Ten want to curl up against him and never leave. Ten shifts forward and – after only a microsecond of hesitation – pulls Johnny’s arm over his waist.

As he lays in Johnny’s arms, trying to time his breathing to match up to Johnny’s, a feeling close to pure bliss radiates through his body in waves. Yuta was wrong. It isn’t obsession. It is more intimate than that. Obsession is unsubstantiated, one-sided, formed under false delusions. This isn’t false, though. This is real.

This can’t be real. How can it be real? And yet it is – he really is in Johnny’s bed, with Johnny actually _in it with him_ , the scent of his cologne even stronger now that his actual body is here. He really is wrapped in Johnny’s shirt, the one that Johnny himself had given him, with the scent of Johnny’s soap and cum on his skin.

_This is the last time_ , Ten thinks as he drifts off. He can’t see Johnny again; the risk is too high. Everything they had worked for, everything they had built – he couldn’t give all that up just to be with Johnny. It would be selfish, self-serving.

///

And yet, he does see Johnny again.

The following week, Johnny picks him up in the parking lot of the UCLA School of Management (he had spent $40 on a Lyft from his apartment, telling Yuta that he was on his way to meet a connect who could help them sell some of the drugs they had stolen) and takes him to his favorite sushi restaurant on the other side of town.

The week after, he meets Johnny at a different club downtown – Avenue, just around the corner from the Playhouse – and he really does suck Johnny’s dick in the bathroom. The champagne Johnny buys him after, Ten is sure, has nothing to do with the blowjob.

Eventually, he loses count of how many times he’s been over at Johnny’s house. He wears Johnny’s clothes, eats his food, sits in his chair, uses his shower, watches his TV, gets bent over his couch and pressed up against his kitchen counter, listens to music on his record player, wakes Johnny up with his mouth on his neck and his hand down his pants. Johnny’s house is practically _his_ house. Why should he feel guilty? Johnny would probably have willingly given everything to him, if he asked for it – the watches, the perfume, the clothes, even the pills. And Johnny never says anything about the missing belongings, though Ten notices, on the third or fourth time he comes over, that Johnny has a new alarm system in place that he turns on every night before heading upstairs.

The pace of Ten and Yuta’s shopping trips starts to slow down. On their most recent trip – to Taeil Moon’s legendary $50 million Beverly Hills mansion – Yangyang had spotted the blinking red light of a hidden security camera in the courtyard and Yuta had to reassure him not to panic, that everything was fine. Ten had to admit that he was shaken up, too, and even Yuta was silent on their ride home. 

Ten still doesn’t tell Yuta about Johnny; Yuta thinks he is hooking up with one of the USC baseball players. What Yuta doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

Every time Johnny texts him, his heart leaps into his throat. Every time Johnny comes inside him, he wants to cry from happiness. _I love you_ , he thinks, when Johnny pushes him down to his knees and slides his cock past Ten’s parted lips. _I love you, I love you, I love you_. Every time he leaves in the morning, Johnny sends him home with a different shirt. “ _Keep it.”_

Days become weeks, and weeks become months.

///

Ten walks into the kitchen, following the smell of cooking. 

Johnny’s back is to him, and the morning light casts a warm glow over his body. He is singing quietly to himself, flipping pancakes over the stove, while the local news plays on low volume on the TV mounted to the wall. Ten’s heart swells.

He walks quietly towards Johnny and hugs him from behind, humming into his back. Johnny makes a noise of amusement, though he continues tending to the pancakes. Ten peers around Johnny’s side, then snakes his arm around Johnny’s waist and steals a pancake from the frying pan.

“Hey!” Johnny protests, trying to smack Ten’s hand away. But Ten just laughs and steps away from Johnny, planting a playful kiss onto his shoulder before he does. As Ten walks to the fridge, still giggling to himself, Johnny slaps him on the ass with the spatula. Ten spins around and pretends to be affronted. “Johnny, how dare you!” he says, stuffing the last of the pancake into his mouth. “I’m delicate.”

Johnny’s eyes fill with heat. “That’s not what I’ve heard.”

Ten blushes and sticks out his tongue. He opens the fridge and pulls out one of the smoothies that Johnny has started making for him every morning, then walks to the island and settles into one of the stools, content to sip his smoothie and stare shamelessly at Johnny’s ass while he finishes making the pancakes.

_“ … in local news, a recent string of high-profile robberies that has confounded LA county detectives for months finally has a promising lead. Singer and reality star Taeil Moon recently shared with the police footage of what appears to be three of the burglars inside his Beverly Hills home last month, carrying out thousands of dollars of clothing. Police are currently investigating the connection between this footage and the cases of over a dozen homes that have been burglarized over the past several months.”_

Ten’s blood runs cold.

Johnny turns off the stove, drops the spatula in the sink, and carries two plates of pancakes over to the island. He sinks into the stool next to Ten and takes a sip of his coffee.

Ten’s heart is pounding in his ears. He tries to tune out the sound of the report, but he can’t.

_“Many of the items that were reported missing have been identified on the social media accounts of dozens of teens and young adults from around Los Angeles. It appears that the burglars have been selling these items, though police are still investigating how the stolen goods appeared on the black market. No arrests have been made, though police report that it is only a matter of time.”_

Beside him, he notices that Johnny has stopped eating. “I’ve heard about this. Crazy, right?"

Ten ignores him, instead focusing on eating his pancakes. He can’t taste them; they are dry as foam in his mouth as he chews. He keeps his eyes trained on the plate. His hand shakes as he takes a drink of his smoothie to force the dry food down his throat.

“Those look like kids,” Johnny says, and Ten finally does look up. The reporter is still talking, but Ten doesn’t process her words. The news report is showing a video of low-quality security camera footage on loop; it pauses, then zooms in. Two people are on screen. One is facing towards the camera, and their facial features are muddled in the graininess of the footage. The other is facing half-away from the camera, holding a Prada bag stuffed to the brim with garments. If you didn’t know him, you wouldn't recognize him. Ten stares back at his plate, suddenly feeling like the floor is spinning beneath him.

_"If you have any information, please contact the LAPD. And now, here’s Tom with the weather on the ones.” “Thanks, Katie! This weekend, expect dry conditions lasting until – ”_

“That looks a bit like you, doesn’t it?” Johnny says jokingly. Ten feels Johnny’s eyes on the side of his face.

“Not really,” Ten says. His throat is dry.

“You’re not even looking!” Johnny says, playfully knocking their shoulders together. 

Ten stands up from the stool. “I’m going to the bathroom,” he mutters, then walks quickly to the bathroom down the hallway without looking at Johnny. The news continues to play, with Tom predicting mild weather for the next five days. 

On his phone, he sees fifteen unread messages and three missed calls from Yuta.

Once inside, he leans over the sink, fighting down the urge to vomit. With shaking hands, he splashes cold water over his face. In the mirror, his face is pale. Everything is fine. They’ll be fine. If they haven’t been caught yet, why would they now? He pinches his cheeks, trying to bring back some more color into his face. He can’t stay in the bathroom forever – but why would he? He has nothing to be afraid of – so he takes a steadying breath, smooths down his hair, and walks back to the kitchen. Johnny ruffles his hair and gets up to refill his smoothie glass. 

This is fine. He will go home, and Johnny will call him tomorrow. Johnny will call him, and Ten will come over, and he will let Johnny make love to him. Ten will fall asleep in Johnny’s arms, in his sheets, in his clothes, lulled to sleep by the sounds of his breathing.

And he does. They do. 

Everything is under control.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry, everything is under control 💔


End file.
